Search results for "Economics."

Coffins in Finland : the history of production, design and attitudes

2017

AbstractCoffins as death-related objects have changed in Finland during the past 150 years and the Finnish funeral industry has been created to answer the changing needs of customers. No longer do people build coffins in the household, or only buy a coffin and some other items from the funeral company: now professionals manage entire funerals. Coffin designs have become simpler and less socially discriminating and the colour formerly reserved for children and young people, white, has become the most popular colour for a coffin. Attitudes towards coffins have also changed, from mild dislike of having a coffin in the home to general demand of hiding coffins even in funeral companies’ premises…

Improvements in Mindfulness Facets Mediate the Alleviation of Burnout Dimensions

2020

Abstract Objectives While interventions using mindfulness have been effective in treating burnout, the mechanisms of change need more research. This study investigated which of five mindfulness facets (observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging, and non-reacting) mediated the intervention effects on three burnout dimensions (exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy) during an 8-week mindfulness-, acceptance-, and value-based (MAV) intervention and a 10-month follow-up. Methods The participants were a heterogeneous sample of employees suffering from burnout (n = 202, 80% women, mean age = 47.5 years). Latent change score modeling was conducted for each combinati…

Like clouds in a windy sky : mindfulness training reduces negative affect reactivity in daily life in a randomized controlled trial

2020

While prior research has found mindfulness to be linked with emotional responses to events, less is known about this effect in a non-clinical sample. Even less is known regarding the mechanisms of the underlying processes: It is unclear whether participants who exhibit increased acceptance show decreased emotional reactivity (i.e., lower affective responses towards events overall) or a speedier emotional recovery (i.e., subsequent decrease in negative affect) due to adopting an accepting stance. To address these questions, we re-analysed two Ambulatory Assessment data sets. The first (NStudy1 = 125) was a 6-week randomized controlled trial (including a 40-day ambulatory assessment); the sec…

2019

Worries about possible harmful effects of new technologies (modern health worries) have intensely been investigated in the last decade. However, the comparability of translated self-report measures across countries is often problematic. This study aimed to overcome this problem by developing psychometrically sound brief versions of the widely used 25-item Modern Health Worries Scale (MHWS) suitable for multi-country use. Based on data of overall 5,176 individuals from four European countries (England, Germany, Hungary, Sweden), Ant Colony Optimization was used to identify the indicators that optimize model fit and measurement invariance across countries. Two scales were developed. A short (…

Burnout-related ill-being at work : Associations between mindfulness and acceptance skills, worksite factors, and experienced well-being in life

2018

The aim of this paper was to investigate the associations between mindfulness and acceptance (MAA) skills and burnout-related ill-being at work (ILLB) after eliminating the impact of worksite (WS) and general well-being in life (WELLB) factors. The results were derived from data on employees (n = 168) of varying professional backgrounds, who experienced relatively high levels of burnout. Analyses were conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM) and the Cholesky decomposition method, since these allow for the investigation of multiple measures and multiple factors in relation to one another. In relation to ill-being at work, the analyses revealed a general MAA factor as well as a spe…

Managing stress during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and beyond: Reappraisal and mindset approaches

2020

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic is a global public health crisis of a scale not previously experienced in modern times (Kickbusch et al., 2020). Governmental ‘lockdown’ measures aimed at minimizing virus transmission including ‘stay at home’ orders, closure of businesses and places of congregation, and travel restrictions have had a substantive societal impact that permeates almost every facet of daily life (Gostin & Wiley, 2020; Shanafelt, Ripp, & Trockel, 2020). These widespread changes represent considerable sources of stress in the population and will have deleterious effects on mental and physical health going forward. As nations begin to emerge from ‘lockdown’, …

The person-oriented approach to burnout : A systematic review

2016

The variable-oriented approach has dominated empirical burnout research, but during the last 10 years a person-oriented approach to burnout has also become common. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify, categorize and evaluate the empirical research to date that has adopted a person-oriented approach to burnout. The results of these studies were then compared with those generated by variable-oriented burnout research. An electronic search of seven databases was conducted in spring 2015. Initially 470 publications were identified, 24 of which met the selection criteria. The reviewed articles were categorized into three groups based on their research target(s): (1) intr…

Multiple job holding, societal change, and individual careers: Contributions to the chaos theory of careers

2020

The chaos theory of careers was applied to identify the connections between multiple jobholders’ careers and societal change. Multiple job holding is a form of employment that consists of two or more overlapping jobs. Six interviews with men born in the 1960s in Finnish North Karelia, whose multiple job holding included agricultural and forestry work, were analyzed. Our results showed that multiple job holding career development has societal connections and that the experiences of multiple job holding varied across individuals. Moreover, multiple job holding experiences and further career development endeavors were influenced by whether the multiple job holding career developed in line wit…

Innovations and Growth: Evidence from Finnish SMEs

2019

The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors that affect the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to create innovations that promote firm growth. Studies regarding the relationship between research intensity and growth have typically produced mixed results, revealing a modest or non-existent influence of innovations on sales growth. These studies have typically used patents as indicators of innovation. We directly asked firms whether their innovations had affected their growth, and we regressed the results over several variables, covering a wide range of dimensions related to (1) personal factors, (2) firm-related factors (including questions that reflect a firm’s in…

Correlation between school dropout and gross domestic product in the emerging countries of Central and Eastern Europe

2020

By school dropout is meant leaving the educational system, regardless of the reached level, before obtaining a qualification or a complete proffesional training or before the end of the study cycle started (Doron & Parot, 2006). Although there are numerous researches on school dropout, we consider that it is necessary to study the relationship it has with the level of development of a country, in order to identify new causes and possible solutions to this phenomenon. In this study we included seven emerging countries of Central and Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary. Thus, we analyzed the correlation between the annual gross domesti…